Tsung-Lun Alan Wan: “Feeling disabled”: Vowel qualities, auditory deprivation and deaf and hard-of-hearing speakers of Taiwan Mandarin

Event:                 Language in Context Seminar

Organisers:        Language in Context

Website:            https://www.ed.ac.uk/ppls/linguistics-and-english-language/research/talks-and-reading-groups/language-in-context-seminars

Contact:             linc@ed.ac.uk

Date:                   FRIDAY, 4^TH DECEMBER

Time:                   15:10-16:30

Venue:                ZOOM (CONTACT US FOR JOINING INFO)

Speaker:             Tsung-Lun Alan Wan (Linguistics and English Language, University of Edinburgh)

Speaker bio:      Tsung-Lun Alan Wan is a third-year PhD student of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. His PhD project adopts sociophonetic approaches to speech production of deaf and hard-of-hearing speakers.  Personal website: http://tsunglunwan.weebly.com/

Title of talk:       “Feeling disabled”: Vowel qualities, auditory deprivation and deaf and hard-of-hearing speakers of Taiwan Mandarin

Abstract:            Assistive hearing devices (e.g., hearing aids and cochlear implants) have been argued to affect deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) speakers’ speech production. Conducting experiments on auditory deprivation (i.e., turning off assistive hearing devices), previous audiological or speech-language pathological studies have suggested that auditory feedback has an impact on speech production in inconsistent ways.  Instead of seeing the assistive technology as a socially neutral material object, this study considers it as a semiotic resource which indexes different selves in DHH speakers’ daily life. This study explores how affective stances toward the auditory deprivation mediate vowel quality changes during auditory deprivation.